Free Damnation's Door: A Cursed Book by Amy Braun Page B

it came to making supernatural allies.
     
    I did my best to look unimpressed. It wasn’t the first time I’d been witness to an execution setup, but all those times before, my friends had never been on the chopping block. And I had usually been the one holding the axe.
     
    Dro and Max skidded to a stop behind me. I shoved them back, making sure they were trapped in the doorway and not in a clear shot for Michael.
     
    Somehow I wasn’t sure my willingness to be a meat-shield and tendency to mouth off was going to be much help to them. The more I could make this my problem, the safer they might be.
     
    Keep telling yourself that, Constance. Maybe Michael will find you amusing enough not to blow you into a million different pieces.
     
    One hard look at the archangel told me otherwise.
     
    “How did you find us?” I asked. There was no point in asking them to let Warrick and Sephiel go. Anyone who’d ever dealt with serious hostage situations knew that never worked right off the bat.
     
    “I have learned to shield myself from prophets much stronger than yours,” Michael said. He had a beautiful voice, just like Lucifer did. Strong, encompassing, and confident. The kind of voice that would make people do anything just to hear it again.
     
    Most people, anyway.
     
    Max knew when to pick his battles when it came to his pride. I was glad he chose to remain silent and lose this one.
     
    “Following the abomination was perhaps simpler,” Michael went on.
     
    “So you listened real hard and got lucky. Give yourself a pat on the back, Mike. You earned it.”
     
    I don’t know why I found it easier to backtalk to angels than demons. Maybe it had something to do with a subconscious hope that they had tiny shreds of morals and decency in them, and wouldn’t be so willing to crush me for being so flippant.
     
    When the pain first hit, I thought a boulder had broken a vase into my head. My skull seemed to harden into glass, then begin cracking until the shards were pushing outward to break through my scalp. It hurt so bad that I grabbed my head, dropped to my knees, and screamed.
     
    It wasn’t what I wanted to do, something I shouldn’t have done, but the pain was blinding and relentless. I couldn’t focus on anything else. Whenever I tried to, it only got worse.
     
    There were angry shouts and yelps of pain. I couldn’t tell what was going on. I felt heat and thought I heard my name once or twice, but it was a hopeless guess beyond the throbbing, stabbing pain threatening to turn my head into a crushed melon.
     
    One shout was louder than the others. It was Dro’s. I would know her voice anywhere, even if I couldn’t make out the words she was saying. Her tone, though... That I didn’t recognize. It was powerful, demanding, implacable.
     
    It was the exact tone she had once used when she promised to erase Lucifer from the earth after he nearly burned me alive.
     
    The heat remained, but as soon as her voice disappeared, so did the pain. The glass shards were yanked out of my head so fast that I gasped and collapsed onto my side. My head thrummed with remnants of pain, and I couldn’t stop shaking. There was a wetness on either side of my ears. I tasted blood on my upper lip, and wondered how long I had been bleeding.
     
    Dro’s familiar, delicate hand placed itself on the back of my head. I jumped when her pins-and-needles healing sank into my skull and erased the damage he had done.
     
    “Last time I ever piss off an angel,” I muttered.
     
    Dro leaned closer to my ear, but it wasn’t just her I felt looming over me.
     
    “I hope you remember that,” Dro whispered. A second shadow reached down to grab my arms just as she finished saying, “Because we’re going with them.”

 
     
     
    Chapter 7
     
     
     
    It was strange to be willingly kidnapped. While we’d been transported wearing blindfolds in the back of a van, I’d managed to get the gist of what happened before one of our angel